It's only fair that our enemy have a turn at their strategy not working, then. I don't get the objection. Ling Qi risked life and limb to drive the group off from the village before. Just now, in fact. It turned out pretty okay. In the context of the binary decision we have, it's the same one now, only slightly more ambiguous. Because of the two choices we have, it's reasonable(I'd argue more reasonable) to perceive the barbarian host in the same terms as when we first arrived. It's the same risk for the same gain, only extended. Is the risk of the village being sacked by their most powerful more palatable now? It doesn't seem so to me, at least.
I think the votes aren't that clear. Search and Rescue does say it's possible some of the enemies don't retreat immediately.
I think having these binary choices is even worse with quasi-partial retreats to juggle in estimation, so I refuse to think about it.
If true, that might also explain the willingness to retreat.
The overall outcome isn't going to change, I'm not going to give in and make Ling Qi trounce them, but I feel like I need to clear up what exactly is happening on all fronts and probably rework the votes, since nobody seems particularly enthused for any of the options.
While I think you made a vocal part of the voter base unhappy with what happened in the update, I do think that for the most part, it was a fine update.
And then... nothing. Kind had expected something to come out of it. Build up for nothing is a bit weird?
Not sure if you saw my previous post addressing people's unrealistic expectations being checked Yrs, but I really don't think you have to rewrite anything. People whose complaints are directed at you don't seem to have a reasonable basis for so much salt IMO. And I've never read any other quest before so I'm not sure what's typical in QMs supplying info for voting options. But I really don't think you should sweat it, the balancing act of churning out creative, original work on schedule while also meeting the voters' demands can't be easy. I for one enjoy your writing. Please keep up the good work
).
As one of the complainers, the problem wasn't so much the outcome as the description of how we got to that outcome.
Yeah we most likely need to raise her war.
The option of Search and Rescue won't necessarily be boring. For one thing, we can address the concerning cold-/emptiness LQ felt (or should I say lack of feeling anything?) at seeing the civilians that had already been killed. She would probably see more of those who killed, soldiers and civvies alike, and we could see what her response is to that. While I don't particularly dislike her ice queen shtick, I'll start disliking it pretty fast if it combines with the post-Forest King arc-effect to make her a less empathetic person overall. While she isn't at Su Ling's level of empathy, she does have the capacity to feel sympathy in general. This next update could be a good opportunity for character development. She can deal with being humbled. Regardless of how she did objectively, she had higher expectations and is now pissed. We can see how she handles the reality check and how her pride is affected. And seeing the dead civilians, enemy and ally soldiers may result in the reality of warfare really hitting her.Mmm, the thing with the votes rn is that there's sort of a choice between "Ling Qi goes after cavalry archers in the way one is always told not to do because she's angry" and "not do that (+ fluff about what will be happening assuming the battle is over)".
In this case, we very much aren't inclined to go after the cavalry archers and overextend here, and a vote which is basically "don't do that" only gives so much to engage with.
Hmm, if I were to think about meaningful choices in that context, I would ask what our options are assuming the battle appears to be over. For example, we could a) go into stealth and trail the barbarians to make sure they're actually leaving and aren't up to anything, b) stay in this village to make sure they're safe and help with clean-up, c) go to the third village to check if they need help, or d) return to our village to make sure Lan-Lan and Zhengui are alright (and the people too I guess
I don't know how well that would fit into your plans, but those might generate more engagement and debate?
The choice is superficially similar at best; at first our abilities were both unknown to each other but now we each have the others' measure, and charging a force attacking a fixed place to drive them off is very different from chasing after them now that they're retreating (and can use retreat/giving ground to attire us down and build up their group techs). That you seem to ignore the additional personal risk of giving chase doesn't mean others are.
Domain weapons are a bit of a blunder but I'm not sure a rewrite is needed at this point. There's a lot of misunderstandings all around:
Things are kinda dense and confusing but like this is mass combat presumably happening very fast. Would be weird if it wasn't.
Don't cloud barbarians only do either physical xor spiritual cultivation? In which case Ling Qi is like two cloud barbarians? Then Ling Qi is fighting three physical-half greens and one weird bard.
I don't think that's even remotely true. Hitting hard and fast to force the enemy to cut their losses and retreat is very different from pursuing fleeing enemies. The Cloud Barbarians are raiders; they are here for glory and loot, not to fight to the death. I don't think this village has anything particularly valuable to the barbarians, so they probably won't be coming back and instead seek for softer targets. If we go after them, we are forcing them into a situation where they will die unless they kill us first. Unless they just scatter and flee, allowing us to easily murder anyone we catch, we are probably biting more than we can chew.
